


88 Days

by yourestuckinmyhead



Category: The Coldest Girl in Coldtown - Holly Black
Genre: 88 days, F/M, an epilogue of sorts, the cold
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-17
Updated: 2016-07-17
Packaged: 2018-07-24 12:26:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7508242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourestuckinmyhead/pseuds/yourestuckinmyhead
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is the worst thing that has ever happened to her in her whole life.</p><p> </p><p>(Alternatively titled “Tiger”)</p>
            </blockquote>





	88 Days

 

It’s hard to imagine a future when stuck in between life and death, between nothing and possibility, between the cold and giving up.

 

Tana refuses to dream of anything but the now, because once she starts looking into _after_ she has to imagine the possibilities, the complications, that come with it.

 

So she sits in her root cellar and plays with time: she focuses on the concrete floor below her until seconds pass with syrupy slowness until her eyes glaze over and hours fade and she hasn’t inhaled the whole time.

 

Tana got very good at pretending she didn’t exist, because opening her eyes and breathing in and out and in and out meant admitting to herself that she was alive, that she had a beating heart and a head with a brain and a scar on her arm that told her that she had lived through things before.

 

Lived through worse things, but the teeth in her mouth said otherwise, the chain around her wrist said otherwise, the locks that held the door above her and the shivers that ran down her spin that that twist in her gut, _that_ one, right there, told her otherwise.

 

This was the worst thing that happened to her in her whole life, but accepting that wasn’t going to make the last forty days of hell go any faster.

 

* * *

 

Gavriel couldn’t be with her all the time, sometimes he would have to leave and get supplies, and other times he simply needed to assert some control over Coldtown.  

 

So, Gavriel was out on the town, trying to implement as much order as his insane mind could manage. He would confess to her, when she could crawl her way to consciousness, that there was more murdering than anything. Killing all the vampires that dare threaten his reign as The Spider was slowly becoming a full-time job, but at least he cleaned all the gore off of himself before descending into her cellar.

 

Sometimes, during the early days, he would present her with a gift in an attempt to distract her from reality. The first thing he brought was a CD player and a bunch of books on tape, “So even if I’m not here, you can have someone reading to you.” But she had long ago stopped caring about the voices, any of the voices, that called out to her.

 

He brought paints and brushes, back in the beginning, and read to her while she painted a sunrise on the east wall and a sunset on the west, the ceiling a clear blue sky. It was meant to be hopeful, to keep her eyes up and looking forward to the day she beat the cold and claw her way out from the underground. But it slowly became a reminder of the things she might never see again, might never get to feel. “It’s not so bad,” Gavriel had whispered to her when she told him her fears. “The perpetual night is full of things that the day can never offer you. The air is cool and fresh, screams that would die easily in the sunlight seem to carry for miles and miles.”

 

“The moonlight is supposed to be very romantic.” He licked along her neck, tasting the sweat that seemed to permanently coat her feverish skin.

 

“Is that what you want, Tana? More romance? I suppose have not appropriately wooed you.” Under the blanket they had shared, his hands moved up and under her shirt and wrapped around her bare waist, his face was pressed up against her neck.

 

She tried to break his hold, but no twists could have freed her. “I have been wooed just fine, now let me go. Your skin is ice cold.”

 

His hands unwound from her body, and he had chuckled as he whispered to her, “It’s not my skin that’s a block of ice, dear, it’s my heart.”

 

She sighed and leant back into him, listened to the slow beat of stolen blood moving through his veins, and wondered if she could ever be like him. Stone cold, absolutely maddeningly insane, and satisfied.

 

* * *

 

The first forty four days were easy, if not slow.

 

The hunger that grew in her was easy to quench with her own blood, and when her blood wasn’t quite enough, Gavriel would give her a sleeping pill. The need that steadily grew in her was subdued by her unconscious state, and the time spent asleep went by faster.

 

But the second forty four days, those were a blur of pain and desire.

 

A man not man beast someone like her someone not quite living would hold her down and stop her screams her hunger boiled in her stomach in her gut and her teeth _ached_ for something to bite into.

 

Nights were sleepless, days were agony, life was hell.

 

The man not man wasn’t there as much, but when he was he would sit far away from her and mutter about things like sunshine and jewels and long forgotten cages for mad mad men, cages for wild beasts.

 

For Tigers and the monsters that loved them.

 

* * *

 

 

She’s not sure how long she’s been in the cellar, time left her a while ago.

 

Tana is not Tana very much, anymore. And if Gavriel has come to visit, she doesn’t remember;  the monster in her rolls, twists, and roars so loudly, so often, that she is more monster than human. More Tiger than Lady.

 

She screams, but they are not her cries. It is the monster, now.

 

And it’s screaming _feed me._

 

The locks on the door rattle like they always do when they are being unlocked. Tana is alert, ready; her heart stuttering in her chest, lips pulled back to reveal her teeth, legs bent and prepared to jump. Everything in her says _attack attack attack atta-_

 

The door is pulled open and everything happens at once.

 

Jameson, still holding onto the key and the door handle, is flung back by some unknown force just as the chain holding her wrist to the wall breaks and her fingers are so _close_ to his flesh the flesh the meat and bone and _blood_.

 

All of a sudden she’s flying. Being thrown backwards at an alarming speed. Carried. Pulled by arms too strong to be human, down down back down into the pit where she belongs and oh how she howls. How she screams into the black night as it screams back at her.

 

She wants to feel that night on her skin, flesh under her fangs and blood in her throat in her gut, she want to feel it _everywhere_. She wants blood.

 

She’s _hungry_.

 

So so hungry that there are no other thoughts but bite bite bite; there are no thoughts but _blood._

 

“Tana.” Her cage growls.

 

She snaps her teeth.

 

“ _Tana._ ” It tightens.

 

She claws her fingers.

 

“ _Tana!_ ” Thick bars clench around her arms and fingers grasp her jaw, but she wants _teeth._

 

She opens her eyes.

 

Tears.

 

“Tana.” A sigh. The metal bars around her relax, pull back from her arms, and move up to hold her face. Lightly, carefully, restraining the teeth that are still straining to bite, to tear, to rip flesh from bone.

 

She inhales the air from the cage’s mouth as it pools across her face.

 

The monster in her stills.

 

Wet leaks down her face.

 

And down her arms.

 

And into her clothes.

 

She smells carnage.

 

Blood is everywhere, coating everything. And instinct says _prey eat bite_ -

 

It’s just as the monster realises this, just as she’s about to open her mouth to _consume._ The other monster bares down on her, stopping all her movements, and whispers, “This is day eighty-nine.”

 

And now Tana knows, now she wakes up from the daze of hunger and fever. Now looks around the room with eyes clear, remembers the days she spent pacing back and forth and back and forth while sucking on her wrist to bring her clarity.

 

She does not dare whimper. Blood rushes too close to her lips.

 

“Tana, I’m so sorry.”

 

She looks at this monster before her with eyes that plead, that beg, for too many things. He’s asking for forgiveness when he’s gone and done the worst thing possible.

 

“You’re not going to flush out the cold. You had too much vampire blood in your system, grew fangs and strength. There is no more waiting, Tana.

 

I love you. And I must give you options because of that.

 

The two of us can stay down here, for longer. Pretend to wait out the Cold and give you time to choose.

 

You can drink from me, and restart this whole thing, live off the blood of vampires. We could travel the world. We could leave Coldtown or rule it. You could remain both Lady and Tiger, both beast and human. I _trust_ that you could do that, Tana. But every day you would grow older, and no one has ever lived with the Cold for that long. I could lose you.

 

I killed the person whose blood is pouring over you to force your hand, push you to the side I want you to take. I love you, and love is often an excuse to do villainous things, evil, monstrous things.

 

_I’ve never had an excuse before._

 

You can drink this blood, die and be reborn as something other than this world: both burned and born from it. You can be immortal, watch the birth and fall of empires, of the world, of all your enemies.

 

Keep your family safe.”

 

Tears were dripping from both their faces, mixing with the blood of the stranger that now coated them both. She tried to open her mouth again, but found it remained clamped shut by the boy, man, immortal being who she thought could be human.

 

“But not all monsters must do monstrous things,” he wept, this thing, this creature, “and if anyone can tame the beast the rolls around inside of all of us, if anyone could tame _me_ , then you can be a good monster. I believe that.”

 

She felt empty, devoid of all emotion and hope. This is what happens when you trust, when you breathe, when you dare to _live_. Life comes and gives you choices and then strips them away until your mouth is a loaded gun. Until the person you thought cared about you most in the world is the one who takes all the choices away.

 

Because he knows what she’ll have to do, what the nature of the disease that runs through her veins will make her do.

 

She looks at the sunrise, the sunset, and the wide blue sky she painted for herself and tries to remember how the sun had warmed her skin. Tries to remember all the things about living that she will never feel again.

 

Tana looks at him with all of her regrets in her eyes.

 

But Gavriel doesn’t see, he is staring at his hands. He says, “I know that I am committing an unforgivable transgression against you; that this is not an act of love, but an act of selfishness. I ask of you, to not misunderstand my reasoning, or accept it.

 

If I have to choose between uncertainty and certainty, I must always choose certainty. The life I’ve lived has contained too much chaos and ruin for me to let go of the one thing that has ever brought me any good.”

 

Tana looks up at the blood still leaking onto them, and makes herself one last promise.

 

“Are you ready, my Tiger?”

 

He lets go.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Well, I’ve been meaning to write this for a long while. The reason for finally getting around to it is due to writers block on a few other projects. (Yes. I said ‘few’. My life is kind of sucking ass rn.) 
> 
> Another reason I don’t feel bad about this taking so long to write is that, rather unfortunately, there has never been much of a demand in this fandom. So this was just a fun exercise that I could undergo with very little backlash. 
> 
> I mean, at least I hope.
> 
> (Please don’t hate me, but I mean. If you want to I guess that’s fine.)
> 
> tl;dr I appreciate you reading my Fic, please leave a Kudos of a comment if you liked it/ feel something about it


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